Entries by Scott Dickson

As one "War on Terror," draws to an end, so starts another. The upcoming withdrawal of British forces from Afghanistan should force our politicians to reflect, largely on the utter futility of combating societal and religious problems with bombs.

Fear is a dirty word. Hope gets a good press. Hence the easy ride for those who envisage a positive future under independence. Voting no out of fear is a sign of weakness, a lack of faith in Scotland to take on the future with confidence. To Yessers...

Giving a speech on Europe to the CBI on Monday, Tony Blair continued his remarkable track record of getting it wrong on just about everything in modern politics. His talk was a rallying call to Europhiles: venerating the European project, and reminding us that UKIP are a bunch...

It's a case of making your bed and sleeping in it. Why is anyone really surprised that Russia is intervening in Ukraine? The dully predictable outburst of anti-Russian sentiment in the media would suggest plenty of people are. Yet it would take only ten minutes on Wikipedia to be aware...

Watching Question Time is like witnessing a formerly smart child start to shove crayons up its nose. For something that was once intelligent, it scarcely resembles its past self. Rather than it being a show for serious debate, it has become theatre, designed to get cheap laughs and high viewing...

As a political party in Scotland, UKIP are a nonentity. This is a fact that should have made Nigel Farage's recent visit to Edinburgh an event of minimal importance, rather than the fracas it turned into. Yet instead of exposing the ostensible "racism" of UKIP, the protest highlighted the hermetically...

It is a truth of 21st Century politics that most debates are reduced to hyperbolic verbal punch ups, without a serious point ever being landed. There is rarely a clash in the House of Commons where some worn out cliche is not used to describe George Osborne as "downgraded." This...

It has been said that student politics is so bitter precisely because the stakes are so low. Nowhere is the truth of this adage this more apparent than at the University of Edinburgh, where this week, in an unprecedented move, the Edinburgh University Students Association (EUSA) took

The news that we are locked in a "generational struggle," against a "terrorist scourge," in North Africa has been greeted with general indifference by Britain's political class and general public. It is fair to suggest most people were probably unaware of the existence of a new terrorist group...

For all the seriousness that a referendum on the EU carries, the mind numbingly dull way in which the issue is being debated would suggest otherwise. Particularly guilty are those attacking the Conservatives for placing party unity above the country's interests.